Our need for spiritual direction

IN that gospel about the Good Shepherd, we are told that the shepherd

knows his sheep, and the sheep also knows the shepherd, can recognize

his voice, and follow him.

    I remember that while vacationing in a mountain resort some years

ago, I saw a modern shepherd, dressed of course now in today’s style

and riding on a motorcycle, calling his sheep with a whistle.

    The sheep immediately turned their heads toward the young man and

followed him. Intrigued, I tried to imitate the whistle which, I must

say, sounded like the shepherd’s, but the sheep did not pay attention

to me at all. It was as if they heard nothing. And so I had a

first-hand proof of the veracity of this gospel.

    This gospel somehow reminds me of the great need for spiritual

direction. For me it is a good way of truly recognizing the voice of

God and not be easily deluded by other voices that can sound like

God’s voice but actually are not.

    We have to be wary of the many imitations around that can mislead us.

We need to have recourse to spiritual direction, choosing a good

spiritual director who should be a true man of God, because we are

poor directors of our own selves.

    We can easily fall at the mercy of our own weaknesses which we should

be humble enough to acknowledge. This is not to mention the many

tricks of the devil and the allurements of the world that can imitate

God’s voice, offering us sweet poison.

    And so, instead of recognizing and corresponding to God’s voice, we

may just be responding to our own likes and dislikes, our own ideas,

our own biases and preferences. We can also fall at the mercy of our

own temperaments and trapped by the many social, political and

economic conditionings around. These are not necessarily bad, but they

cannot be equated immediately to God’s voice. They can mislead us.

    If we are the intellectual type, for example, we can easily convert

our Christian life into a kind of intellectualism. If we are the

active type, we can easily fall into activism. The many good things we

have, all gifts from God, can be easily corrupted by all sorts of

moral and spiritual viruses that can come to us in a very subtle,

imperceptible way.

    We all need to have spiritual direction. We have to allow the

intricate workings of our spiritual life, which has to contend with

all sorts of things in life, to be guided by somebody else, because

though we are the ones who make the final decisions and choices, we

all need to be enlightened, guided, suggested, even corrected.

    Yes, we need spiritual direction because we have to explore our

spiritual and apostolic possibilities, map out our plans for spiritual

growth, expose and cultivate our hidden potentials, develop virtues

and enliven our piety, not to mention, make strategies for our

ascetical struggles.

    In short, we need spiritual direction because we need to live our

life at God’s pace. And this cannot be achieved simply on our own.